The Lady Gambles (20 page)

Caro came to an abrupt halt, her eyes widening in alarm, as she saw a furiously angry Dominic striding forcefully towards her. It could not be! Dominic had
gone off for the day to see to other business. He was not really here at all, was a figment of her imagination, brought about by the chasm of misery Caro had fallen into at the thought of being parted from him.

‘Where do you think you are going?’ The grip of his hands on the tops of her arms felt real enough, as did the fierceness of his scowl as he glowered down at her. ‘Answer me this instant, Caro!’

Dominic was real! He was really here!

Caro could not breathe. Could not think. Could only stare up into Dominic’s face and know that she loved him past all bearing…

‘You little fool!’ He shook her, eyes glittering in the harsh handsomeness of his face as he glared down at her. ‘Do you not realise the danger you have put yourself in by venturing out alone like this?’

‘Why are you here?’ She gave a dazed shake of her head. ‘You told me you had other business to attend to for the rest of the day. You said—’

‘I am well aware of what I said, Caro,’ he grated. ‘Just as I am aware that you
lied
to me when you said you would be resting in your rooms for the rest of the morning. You have obviously taken advantage of my absence to pack your bag and make your escape without so much as a word of goodbye!’

‘I—’ Caro moistened her dry lips.

‘Where were you going?’ Dominic demanded harshly as he shook her slightly again. ‘What—?’ He broke off abruptly, his eyes suddenly wide and staring.

‘Dominic?’ Caro could only look up at him uncomprehendingly as those silver-grey eyes turned up into his head before glazing over completely, his mouth becom
ing lax, and his hands losing their grip upon her arms as he began to sink slowly to the ground.

Revealing to her frightened gaze the hefty and brutish-looking man who stood behind him, some sort of cudgel raised in his hand, before something was thrown over her head to cut off all sight and she felt herself being lifted and carried away…

C
aro had no idea how long she had been held a prisoner in this opulently furnished bedchamber. It had seemed like hours, and yet it could equally have been only minutes. Time had become unimportant to her since she had seen Dominic fall to the ground after receiving that blow to the back of his head.

None of her anguished thoughts since that time had been for herself; she was far too worried whether that blow to Dominic’s head had been heavy and hard enough to kill him.

A world without Dominic was unthinkable. Unimaginable. Making a complete nonsense of any concerns Caro might have for her own welfare. She had become the prisoner of Nicholas Brown, of course. There could be no other possible explanation for what had occurred. But none of it mattered to Caro in the slightest if Dominic were now dead.

She stood up and moved restlessly around the room to end up standing in front of the window. It was barred
on the outside and looked out over a walled and secluded garden, with a sheltering of surrounding trees that made it impossible for anyone in any of the neighbouring houses to see either into the garden or the house.

It was a seclusion she was already aware of, because the window had been the first place she had checked for escape, once she had managed to untangle herself from the blanket that had been kept about her as she was bundled inside a coach and transported to this house.

There had been two men inside the coach with her, and although the blanket did not allow her to see their faces, she could easily guess that one of them had struck Dominic, and the second was the man who had stood behind Caro and thrown the blanket over her head. Neither of them had deigned to answer her repeated demands during the journey to know whether or not they had killed Dominic.

So far she had seen nothing of Nicholas Brown…

Caro knew that she should be afraid of the man. That the men he employed were responsible for Ben’s death and the severity of the injuries Lord Thorne had received several nights ago. That those same men might also have now slain Dominic…

And yet Caro felt too contemptuous and angry towards Brown to be in the least afraid of him. Contempt, because all of those acts had been cowardly, administered in such a way that neither Brown nor any of his men were ever in any real danger of injury themselves. Anger, because if Dominic did indeed lie dead somewhere, then Caro felt fully capable of administering that same fate to Brown, if she were given the slightest opportunity.

A choking sob rose in her throat. Dominic could
not be dead! It was a possibility too horrific to even contemplate—

Caro turned sharply as she heard the key turning in the lock of the door, her chin raised proudly high, sea-green eyes full of the contempt she felt as Nicholas Brown stepped into the room.

‘Mrs Morton,’ he greeted with his usual relaxed charm—for all the world as if they were exchanging pleasantries in a drawing room! ‘You’re comfortable, I hope?’ he added courteously as he remained standing in the doorway of the bedchamber.

Her chin lifted disdainfully. ‘I have witnessed a man being…felled before my eyes.’ Caro gathered her courage after that slight falter as she talked of the attack on Dominic, determined to show this man no weakness whatsoever. ‘I have suffered being covered in a rough and smelly blanket, abducted in a coach, and held a prisoner in this bedchamber for some time. Yes, Mr Brown, I am perfectly comfortable, thank you.’

Grudging admiration entered that calculating brown gaze. ‘I understand now why Blackstone became so besotted with you,’ he murmured.

It was an admiration Caro did not value in the slightest. Any more than she believed Dominic had ever been besotted with her. But the thought of it was enough to give her the courage to continue in the same vein. ‘Unfortunately I consider you so far beneath contempt that you do not even have the right to breathe Lord Vaughn’s name.’

A tightness appeared around those brown eyes as his gaze narrowed. ‘We will see how wonderful you still consider him to be when he fails to rescue you in time from my “contemptuous” clutches.’

The only part of that statement that mattered to Caro was the indication it gave that Dominic was still alive! She sagged inside. If that could only be true, if Dominic could still but live, then whether or not he succeeded in rescuing her did not matter; Caro just wanted him to be safe.

She raised scornful brows. ‘Dominic is worth a hundred—no, a thousand!—of you.’

Brown scowled darkly. ‘Perhaps you should wait to make comparisons as to who is the better man until after I have bedded you?’

Caro’s eyes had widened before she had a chance to control her reaction to this shocking statement. ‘You will not find me a willing bed partner, Mr Brown,’ she assured cuttingly, her chin still raised defiantly high.

His mouth twisted derisively. ‘I am counting on it, Mrs Morton,’ he drawled mockingly. ‘Blackstone took my prized possession from me and now I am very much enjoying the anticipation of availing myself of his,’ he jeered before stepping out of the room, and relocking the door behind him.

Caro sank weakly down on to the bed, wondering how she could ever have been deceived into thinking Nicholas Brown was anything other than what he was: a low, despicable man, with no honour, or, indeed, any virtues to recommend him.

She could only hope that, if Dominic truly were still alive, he would look for her—as he surely must?—and find her, before Brown decided to carry out his threat.

‘Everyone is in position, my lord.’ Drew Butler spoke softly at Dominic’s side as the two men stood hidden
in a doorway further down the road from the house in Cheapside belonging to Nicholas Brown.

The house where Dominic hoped and prayed that he would find Caro. Alive. And unharmed. Anything else was unacceptable to him.

What he would say and do to Caro once he had delivered her safely back at Brockle House, Dominic had not dared think of as yet. He had still not got over the shock of regaining consciousness earlier only to find Caro was nowhere to be found.

‘Are you sure you are up to this, my lord?’ Drew voiced his concern. ‘The blow to your head was severe, and—’

‘Let’s get this over with, Drew,’ he said grimly as he raised the two pistols in his hands ready for breaching Brown’s front door. ‘There will be time enough to worry about the blow I received to my head once we have found Caro and I am assured she has come to no harm at Brown’s hands.’ The expression on his face was enough to show what would happen to said man if Caro had been harmed in any way…

Dominic had downed a single glass of brandy earlier in order to put him back into his right senses, after which he had sent for Drew Butler, and then taken him and the men who had formerly been under his command into the study at Brockle House, in order that they might devise a plan to effect a rescue without injury to Caro.

Spending over two hours observing the comings and goings of Brown’s men to his house in Cheapside, so that they might count the number of adversaries they would have to deal with once they were inside, had stretched Dominic’s patience to breaking point. Enough
so that now he could not wait to get inside the house and have this thing between himself and Brown over and done with once and for all.

And, far more importantly, to know that Caro was indeed safe and unharmed…

Caro felt both thirsty and hungry as she lay upon the bed, several more hours having passed without anyone offering her refreshment of any kind. Something she did not feel inclined to bring to anyone’s attention when she had not seen Nicholas Brown again for that same length of time.

It was—

Caro sat up abruptly as she heard the sound of several unnaturally loud bangs, taking several seconds—and a few more of those loud bangs—before she realised that what she was hearing was gunfire.

Dominic!

She rose hastily from the bed to run across to the locked door, pressing her ear against it to see if she could hear anything of what was taking place on the other side. Men shouting. Feet running. More shots. And then an unnatural and eerie silence…

Caro stepped back from the door, unsure as to whether Dominic and the men who had accompanied him were the victors of the battle or whether it was the despicable Nicholas Brown and his men. If it was the latter—

The key was being turned in the lock!

The handle was turning.

The door being pushed open—

‘Dominic!’ Caro cried gladly as he stood so tall and
in command in the doorway, that gladness turning to horror, and her face paling, as Caro saw the blood staining the front of his jacket and shirt. She ran across the room. ‘You are hurt!’

‘It is not my blood, Caro,’ he had time to reassure her before his arms wrapped about her and he held her tightly against his chest.

She leant back slightly to look up at him with wide, haunted eyes. ‘Is it Nicholas Brown’s?’

Dominic’s jaw tightened. ‘We struggled, and the gun between us went off. He is dead, Caro,’ he added hoarsely.

‘I am glad!’ she assured him fiercely. ‘He meant to—he threatened to—’

‘Do not think of it again, my dear.’ Dominic could not bear just now to know what Brown had threatened to do to Caro if she had not been rescued. Any more than he wanted to think of the battle, the deaths, that had just occurred.

All talk, explanations, could come later. It was enough for now that he held her safely in his arms…

‘The physician would not approve of you imbibing brandy so soon after receiving that severe blow to your head!’ Caro stood in the doorway of the study at Brockle House as she glowered at Dominic disapprovingly.

In truth, his head was pounding worse than it had this morning. But whether the physician who had been called would have approved of his actions or not, Dominic knew that a glass of best brandy, his first since returning Caro back to Brockle House two hours earlier, was necessary if he was to get through the necessary
conversation with her. Indeed, that he might need more of it before the evening was through…

It had been a difficult afternoon for all of them—explanations to be made to the representatives of the law, arrangements made for the removal of Brown’s body and those of his men.

With so many witnesses to what had taken place, and Caro’s own testimony of her abduction and Brown’s intentions towards her, it had not been too difficult to persuade the authorities that Brown and his men were the guilty parties, and Dominic and his men merely effecting a rescue. In truth, he had a suspicion that certain members of the law were pleased to be relieved of the presence of the troublesome Nicholas Brown, once and for all.

Caro, as Dominic might have expected, had stood up wonderfully well under all the strain!

‘Come in and close the door, Caro,’ Dominic re quested softly now as he leant back against the front of the leather-topped desk.

She stepped lightly into the study and closed the door behind her, disturbed by how ill Dominic now looked; there was a grey cast to his skin, his eyes sunken in the dark shadows above the high blades of his cheekbones. His mouth was a grimly thinned line and his jaw was clenched tensely.

‘Did…the events of this afternoon disgust you?’ he asked huskily.

She raised startled eyes to look at him searchingly, but was unable to read anything of his mood from his expression. ‘How could I possibly feel disgust when I know that if you had not succeeded in killing Brown then it would be you and I who now lay dead?’

His mouth quirked. ‘There have been several occasions when you have given me the impression you would not consider my own death to be such a bad thing.’

‘I was young and silly—’

‘And now you are mature and so much wiser?’ he teased.

Caro felt the warmth of the colour that entered her cheeks. ‘I feel…older than I was this morning, certainly.’

Dominic’s frown was pained. ‘I am sorry for that.’

‘Why should
you
be sorry?’ She looked at him quizzically. ‘It is Nicholas Brown who is responsible for my new maturity, Dominic, and not you. He—if you had not rescued me, he told me that he intended to—’

Dominic stepped forwards and took her firmly into his arms. ‘I have already told you that it will do you no good to think of that any more,’ he urged. ‘Bad enough that I have to think of it, imagine it, without knowing it hurts you, too.’ His arms tightened almost painfully about her.

Caro raised her head to once again look up at him. ‘Does the thought of it hurt you so badly, Dominic?’

His eyes glittered a pale silver. ‘Almost as much as the knowledge that you were leaving me.’

‘I was not leaving you, Dominic.’ She sighed. ‘I merely thought it best that I return home—’

‘Without so much as a goodbye? Giving me no idea how I would ever find you again?’ His expression had become fierce, those silver eyes glowing with repressed emotion as he looked down at her.

Caro swept the tip of her tongue lightly over the dryness of her lips, a hope, a dream, starting to build
and grow inside her. ‘Would you ever have wanted to find me again?’

‘How can you even ask me that?’ Dominic shook her slightly in exasperation. ‘Do you not know—have you not guessed yet how much I love you?’

‘What did you say?’ Caro hardly dared to believe the emotions she could now read in those glowing silver eyes. Warmth. Admiration. Love!

‘I love you, Caro,’ he repeated huskily. ‘Do you think, after all that has happened, that if I were to get down on my knees and beg, you might one day be able to love me in return and consider becoming my wife?’

Her cheeks warmed as she remembered the occasion upon which she had said those words to him. ‘As I recall, you had just finished telling me that our lovemaking was a mistake—’

‘Then it was a most wonderful, glorious mistake!’ he assured her fiercely as he cupped the sides of her face between gentle hands. ‘I have been a fool, Caro. An arrogant fool. My only excuse—if there can ever be one!—is that I have never met a woman like you before. Never known any woman with your courage, your generosity of spirit, your honesty. I love you truly, Caro, and if you could one day learn to love me in return, I promise you I will love you for the rest of our lives together. Will you, Caro? Will you give me the chance to show you how much I love you? A chance to persuade you into learning to love me?’ he added less certainly.